


Growing Old in King-Sized Beds

by stormboxx



Category: SMAP
Genre: 2Top, Best Friends, Celebrities, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Humor, Idols, Japan, Nostalgia, One Shot, Reflection, Smoking, Tokyo (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 05:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4992022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormboxx/pseuds/stormboxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sleeping alone in a big bed makes Nakai Masahiro think about many different things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Old in King-Sized Beds

** Growing Old in King-Sized Beds **

201 - the luxury suite room, with a bed big enough for a good three or so people, and yet it felt extremely unsatisfactory.  Lighting a cigarette, he slowly inhaled the dirty poison he loved so and held his breath. Seconds later and short of oxygen, he exhaled in a tired manner, with a barely audible sigh.

Nakai sometimes let himself think how silly it all was, the hysteria, the extravaganza, the pretentiousness of how they were treated these days. In their junior- and early years it had been perfectly ok for them to share rooms, three in one and three in the other. When Mori first quit it had felt incredibly empty and slightly awkward with just two persons in one room, but after a while, as with everything in their line of work, they got used to it. But those days, the two-in-one, three in the other-days, were also something of an ancient past to Nakai. It made him feel old, thinking that way.  
  
The one thing he sometimes had trouble coming to terms with was how they now, all in their thirties, were forced to act their age, forced to get old. ‘Forced’ was maybe not the right word for it, but sometimes he couldn’t help thinking that way nonetheless. Maybe it was the on-off camera thing that confused him; On camera, acting their age was almost not an option. Off camera they were expected to. Expected to be grown-up men in their mid- and late thirties, expected to be serious about work, reputation, lifestyle. They were also expected to accept that all these things were the different aspects in the life of an idol. And they did too. Nakai knew he couldn’t do anything else than this; They had all literally grown up with a camera in their face.

It wasn’t a bad thing. He learned new things about himself every day and about the others too. He didn’t really want to say it, as cliché as it sounded, but they had grown to become quite the family. A family with five different and very strong personalities, perhaps, but a family nonetheless.

As the intimidating neon-red numbers on his digital watch rhythmically and determinedly ticked into the early hours of morning, these thoughts were constantly on his mind. Sleep was crucial for the upcoming concert, but Nakai knew he would lie on his bed silently and stare out the window and into Tokyo’s illuminating nightscape until his alarm would go off. He remembered the countless times when he’d shared a room with Kimura and especially the one time both of them had fallen sick with a cold. He remembered how they were scolded by their manager for not looking after their health and how nice it felt to skip rehearsal that day and just talk about everything for hours. Sometimes it felt so long ago Nakai almost wondered if it ever really happened. It was weird, he thought to himself, that time was something that was both beautiful and precious, and yet had a sense of strangling at the same time.

He put out his cigarette and got up.

As he left his room, not bothering with his boots, but silently jumping into the hotel slippers, he knew he was going against the expectations and the luxury so generously offered him by the agency. He was probably going against his very age and his bitterly reclining hairline, but sometimes it felt good to do the things one weren’t supposed to do.

He gave the door with the number 202 written on it two quick, determined knocks, and decided if it didn’t open within ten seconds he would let it be.

The door unlocked when he had counted up to twenty-four.

“You came for the symphony?” Kimura yawned tiredly and opened the door further for Nakai to enter.

“What symphony?” Nakai jumped down on a bed the same size as the one in his own room.

Kimura locked the door and swiftly stripped out of the worn-out Aerosmith T-shirt, leaving him only in a pair of pajama pants a little too short. Nakai thought he’d seen that pajama years ago, though he wasn’t completely sure.

“You know I snore like a bitch.”

Kimura almost drowned himself in the blanket and turned his back to Nakai.

They hadn’t shared a room in eight years or so, and still Kimura acted completely like he used to, all those years ago.  Nakai couldn’t help but smile.

“Hey Nakai,” Kimura turned, laying on his stomach and his face in the pillow, only one eye open and focused on Nakai, a mere twenty-five inches away.

“Can’t sleep?”

There were a few seconds of silence before Nakai finally let out a sigh and spoke.

“I feel old.”

Nakai could feel Kimura looking at him, though he knew that the other man knew that he was telling the truth. No jokes. Just being honest.

“Well… we are old, Nakai.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m just stating a fact, not trying to comfort you, you old geezer.”

Nakai smiled, knowing that was exactly what Kimura was doing. The man was a terrible liar.

As he listened to Kimura’s breath become steady and starting to snore lightly he, too, felt sleep slowly taking him in.  
When Kimura finally thought Nakai was asleep he put the blanket over him too, speaking with a quiet, sleep-sought voice.

“We all were young together, and by the looks of it we’ll grow old together too. It’s like we married… long ago… and have a very… happy… marriage..”

“You are not making  _any_  sense.” Nakai laughed, and he felt the figure beside him stir.

“You are supposed to be asleep.” Kimura huffed, slightly embarrassed, and for a few seconds looked so much like his 17-year-old self.

“Goodnight, Captain.”

Kimura mumbled something incoherently before settling into steady breathing and painfully loud snoring.  But it was a snore Nakai knew, from so many years back, and he felt younger just by hearing it so vividly like this again.  
  
Getting old wasn't so bad when he knew he wouldn't be doing it alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Another old SMAP one-shot from 2011, originally posted on LJ. No edits/changes have been made to it.


End file.
